In every wargamer's life there comes a point where they find themselves longing to run a game of scale so grand and scope so epic that they seem mad. For me, this game is Operation Market Garden.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

First progress - 2nd Battalion Irish Guards Sherman Platoon

At 1435 hours on September 17th 1944 the Irish Guards under Joe Vandeleur led the way for XXX Corps as the spearhead of Garden. As an Irishman and in light of this it is only appropriate that the first unit completed be representative of this.

Based on an extremely helpful chart found here I worked out the unit marking for A Squadron of the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards Regiment.

The unit consists of three Airfix M4 A1 Sherman tanks and one Revell re-issue of the MatchboxFirefly variant Sherman. All unit markings and insignia are hand painted as I've never had the patience for transfer sheets and I wanted to practice my freehand. The tanks were spray undercoated black and then airbrushed with Games Workshop'sCatachan Green. Details are GW paints again, with Badab Black used as a final wash to dirty them up a bit.

All in all, not a bad start to the project, even if they did take a long time. Hopefully I'll manage a more consistant work rate with the rest of the units.

Great stuff - - Sixter here I'm digging into the Nijmegen bridge crossing onto the island & mysterious failure to move to relieve Arnhem.'If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.' said Heinz Harmel later.http://www.arrse.co.uk/military-history-militaria/93721-17th-september-1944-operation-market-garden-7.html- and I played the entire Market Garden Highway To The Reich game over 3-4 months with 2 school friends when I was 16 years old.Do you have the configurations - just reading the 2011 book 'We Fought At Arnhem' and it talks about two 'companies' of Irish Guards - does he really mean platoons? What could they be?DO please post on AARSE if posstootle-pipSIXTER

He means Companies. At the time it was 1 HQ Company, 1 Support Company and 4 Rifle Companies to the Battalion.

Looking at the numbers I have found here and there and the suggestion that the Irish Guards were fighting with the Infantry and Tank Battalions brigaded together for support that *probably* means somewhere in the region of 120-150 men with 17 Shermans.